Cell phone vs Tablet. What do you use?

DanMan32 · Dec 16, 2020

ericphotoart said:
Someone said a tablet has to have at least 4GB of RAM but many tablets on that list have 2 GB. Is 4 really necessary?

I admit it's probably speculation but an educated one. Having only 2GB seemed to be the common denominator for those tablets where Play wouldn't offer Fly. The minimum expected may actually be 3GB.

Brian Fist · Dec 16, 2020

I just started flying a Mavic Air 1 myself (having owned a Phantom 4 Pro v1 for a few years I am not new to drones) and I ultimately ended up using an old cellphone as a dedicated device. It is an LG V20, primarily chosen for the replaceable battery, but it has a defective main microphone which makes it useless as a phone (have to hold it exactly the right way and distance for people to hear you), so I factory reset it and set it up for DJI Go 4 for the MA1.

The display is almost the same size as my Galaxy S9+ phone, it has a ton of battery life for drone use (I charge it only after I am done flying the MA1 through about 5 batteries and still have about 60-70%+ battery life and that is with GPS/WiFi running and brightness maxed out). I also put a matte screen protector on to help with glare. I say help, because if you have the sun directly reflecting you still get a bright spot, just not a 100% intense direct reflection. I use polarized sunglasses all the time and find it about 80-90% effective in cutting even non-direct glare out, which is more than enough to enjoy flying the MA1. The screen is big enough to not miss information that pops up, I also have no difficulty selecting options and bringing up menus and such on the fly. Anything smaller would just suck in my opinion. Recharging is easy as I just use the DJI MA1 cable without the micro-usb adapter since the LG V20 is a USB-C connection. I do run it in Airplane mode with WiFi auto-connect turned off to keep disruptions of the DJI Go 4 experience to nothing. If I find I need connectivity out and about I can always put a sim-card in the phone and have data access via my cell plan, but downloading maps works just fine over WiFi for now. Especially being someplace that has WiFi that I can access before a flight it is seamless. I even did a hotspot off my GS9+ once and just used that while I was flying without needing to deal with a sim-card. Again pretty easy to do and no risk of interference if you just choose the proper frequencies for the aircraft and then choose the other band for the hotspot.

I will say the LG V20 worked out excellent though, as it fits in the elastic pocket on the back of the MA1 drone-only zippered case. I have a Ultimaxx waterproof case that holds my DJI Goggles, the MA1, the controller with modified 4Hawks Raptor SR antenna along with 5 batteries, charger, charging hub and the rest of the wires needed for the MA1. I modified the case to fit the original MA1 zippered drone case because I just was not comfortable with how the MA1 bounced around in the case by itself. In doing that I was able to store the 4Hawks panel under the MA1 case.

As a side-note, for my P4P I use a Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 with a custom rom and it runs great on that tablet, especially being an 8" display. I ordered a matte screen protector for that as well after using one on the LGv20 with the MA1.

Brian Fist · Dec 18, 2020

One other thing I would like to point out is that I noticed today in using both my Galaxy S9+ and the LG V20 with the Mavic Air controller is that the LG v20 fits better (it isn't as thick) and displays better (as in the controller "legs" do not impose on the screen as much on the LG V20 as they do on the Galaxy S9+).

I found that I could touch anywhere on the LG V20 screen without issue, where-as the Galaxy S9 made hitting the record button the right and the on-screen icons to change picture settings and stuff was much more difficult because of how close to the "leg" that part of the screen sits.

I can say I much preferred using the LG V20 over the Galaxy S9+. Now the Galaxy S9+ does have a MUCH brighter screen, but I found that if I just shaded myself with my body, or with the antenna from the controller (I have a 4Hawks Raptor SR) it was just fine. The Galaxy S9+ did not need any shading and worked in direct sun without issue, so there is that.